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Seed mob take on Origin's dirty fracking energy

From left: MillieTelford, Stuart Nugget,Tyrone Foster and Nicole Hutton at the SydneyTown Hall on September 5

When plans to frack the Northern Territory were announced, communities didn’t even know what fracking was.

Communities were told the mountains of salt, billabongs of bleach and other toxic chemicals ready overflow in the first wet season were just like products you’d find in your cupboard at home.

Nicole Hutton, a Garrwa woman now living in Brisbane, says there was no consultation.

She’s an activist for Seed Indigenous Youth Climate Network. The Seed mob take their lead from Elders.

Seed has worked against fracking in the Northern Territory for over five years.

Members began communicating within and between Territory communities, formalising their organisation in 2014.

By the 2015 NT election, the ALP won a landslide, promising a fracking moratorium.

Nicole Hutton said this temporary reprieve was “a powerful time” when communities were educated. But last year the ALP Gunner Government announced fracking would go ahead. This followed federal government threats to remove GST revenue if state and territory governments didn’t allow fracking.

Then Bill Shorten promised $1.5 billion to build the Beetaloo gas pipeline to Darwin to export. Immediately after the Federal election, fracking maps covering more than 50 per cent of the Territory were released.

Is Pine Gap for Arms Control or the US fighting machine?

Labor governments surrendered Australian sovereignty in other ways by agreeing in 2008 to renew the lease on North West Cape without any conditions on how US nuclear attack submarines could use the base[i]. This could include undermining China’s ability to deter a nuclear war.[ii] Labor subsequently agreed to let the US install long-range ground sensors at NWC to help conduct space warfare against Russia and China in violation of Australia’s support for a treaty outlawing the militarisation of space.[iii] The public were not told about the significance of these developments, nor about similar changes at the Pine Gap satellite base near Alice Springs.

The US National Security Agency essentially runs Pine Gap’s role in intercepting a wide range of electronic signals providing real-time targeting information for battlefield use by US forces. It also helps detect data on heat emissions from missiles, jet engines and ground explosions that feed into military operations, including space warfare, regardless of whether Australia opposes a particular US war. [iv]

West Papua’s road to 'independence', following the Timorese lead?

The groundswell of regional support continues to grow in the Pacific - and also globally - for West Papuan self-determination, writes David Robie. The latest repression only adds to this momentum.

Indonesia’s harsh policies towards West Papua ought to be scrapped. Whatever happened to the brief window of enlightenment ushered in by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in 2015 with promises of a more “open door” policy towards foreign journalists and human rights groups?

Instead, Jakarta has launched in recent years a major diplomatic offensive in the region through aid and efforts to win Pacific “hearts and minds” as demonstrated by last month’s “Pacific” Expo hosted in Auckland’s Sky City.

National Security and Press Freedoms in Australia

03 September 2019

Published on 03 September 2019

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by Dr. Binoy Kampmark, July 19 2019

Australian society relishes secrecy and surveillance. Forget the laid-back, relaxed demeanour that remains the great fiction of a confected identity; like all such creations, the trace should not be mistaken as the tendency. The political culture of Australia remains shaped by penal paranoia and an indifference to transparency. The citizen is not to be trusted; rather, the subject is to be policed and regulated into apathetic submission.

The statute books of the federal parliament are larded with provisions of secrecy that make doing credible journalism in the country nigh impossible. Journalists are left to their own devices, inventive as these might be, assisted by the odd prized leak.

The Australian Federal Police raids executed last month on the home of a News Corp journalist and the Sydney headquarters of the ABC had, for the clandestine community operating in the capitals of Australia, a surprise. A usually divided fraternity came together in one voice, attempting to challenge the warrants and seek reform on matters related to press freedoms.

Media organisations would like to see parliament perform its functions, namely in the field of passing legislation that would enhance Freedom of Information provisions, arm press outlets with the means to contest warrants aimed at journalists, furnish whistleblowers with credible protections, and tilt the balance away from the national security grand inquisitor that seems to prevail in Canberra.

Injustice within the Law means Resistance is always our Duty

by Danny O'Reilly (This article was originally published by Vanguard on January 10, 2019.)

We are told that the law is impartial. That all stand equally before it, and that it arbitrates fairly and with justice. But it doesn’t. Our lived experiences show us that’s a lie.

It was the French poet and writer Anatole France who wrote the well-known words, “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.” There is a fundamental truth in this quote that demonstrates the real nature of the law as we know it. In a class society like capitalism, the law exists for the benefit of the rich and ruling class while it punishes the poor and working classes all the while holding high the banner of “equality”.

Arising from this contradiction between the self-avowed ‘equality’ and ‘impartiality’ of the law and the reality of the inherent inequality of a class society in which that law is applied, there exists a concept of ‘injustice within the law’.